BMI is used as a screening tool to identify possible weight problems for children. CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommend the use of BMI to screen for overweight in children beginning at 2 years old.

For children, BMI is used to screen for overweight, at risk of overweight, or underweight. However, BMI is not a diagnostic tool. For example, a child may have a high BMI for age and sex, but to determine if excess fat is a problem, a health care provider would need to perform further assessments. These assessments might include skinfold thickness measurements, evaluations of diet, physical activity, family history, and other appropriate health screenings.

Except when they’re still idiots about it. I listened to an RN today complain about how her pediatrician was treating her son. He’s 15, 6 feet tall, and weighs 250 pounds, and every last bit of it is muscle. He lifts weights, is on the football team, rides his bike in excess of 500 miles a year, is in marching band, etc. What does the doctor, the DOCTOR who should know better, say? He’s overweight and needs to lose it, because it’s unhealthy to weigh so much. She shot right back at him that if the doctor was so worried about his health, then he should run (insert gamut of bloodwork tests she knows all about) and if any come back with bad numbers, then he’s allowed to talk about the weight. The BMI is gold nonsense has even gotten to the doctors who should be smarter than that.

Personally, I’m in favor of keeping kids in school eight and a half or nine hours a day, not six and a half, and I say that as a former teacher and coordinator of a program for at-risk high school students. I’d keep six hours of academic time, half hour lunch and three 15-minute unstructured breaks during the day, and have an activity period, required PE with elective choices, and a structured study hall with tutors. But no one asks people who actually have experience, and no one would want to hear what we have to say anyway. What’s the bumper sticker say? “It’s a shame the people who know how to run the country are busy teaching school”? I’m not teching school any more, but I haven’t forgotten either

What she said.

Many people who are thin achieve it through using some kind of speed (cigarettes are a type of speed). Very few people in a society as unhealthy as the one we live in are either very fat or very skinny because they are making good choices about how to eat and live their lives.

I hope for your sake you start eating and taking care of yourself. I get the feeling you know that your self-loathing about your own body is harming your very soul, and that’s why you don’t want people to emulate what you’re doing. Loreli, you are better than that, and once you can look in the mirror and love the person you are, your body will follow along with the ride. Meaning, if you need to be a little heavier to be healthy, you will be and you’ll be okay with it because if you love yourself, you have to love the body you live in too.

Good luck to you, I think you will be okay.

If a person gets thin though illness, cancer, smoking, or snorting their way there, it’s all good, because in the end you’re thin.

No, they really don’t. Like I said in my last comment, I lost as much weight as I did by eating close to nothing and smoking cigarettes. People ask me how I’m skinny and I tell them straight out, ‘because I don’t eat and I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, I don’t recommend it,’ hoping that it’ll serve as an example of some sort, and they don’t seem to understand that it’s actually a bad idea.

I was also highly considering snorting/swallowing speed for awhile there so I could lose more weight, but Adderall ended up making me feel really shitty, so I was thankfully smart enough to opt out of that one.

All of us are tall, so even if she ends up being the ‘shortest,’ she’s still going to grow to be 5’5″ at the very least. She’s TEN for god’s sake, and my entire family has been on her ass about her weight. Even if her weight was as important as they thought it was, she’s going to grow half a foot in a year or two anyway! And she does figure skating every fucking day for hours, it seems, and she doesn’t lose weight. How the hell is that her fault?!

Besides, kids are supposed to be chubby, I think. Maybe because I’m Eastern European, but it always freaks me out when I see skinny kids.

Now they’re all telling her to strive for my body type. In March 2005 I was 180 pounds at 5’8″. I was raped by my exboyfriend who took the time to make sure I knew he thought I was fat and because of that, depression, self-esteem issues, and my severe PTSD, I lived off a meal a day of pasta, cigarettes, and diet Pepsi. By April 2006, I was 135 pounds. Now I’m 18 and 128 pounds because I can’t stop hating my body (I still think I’m fat). Of course, she doesn’t know this, and my family doesn’t.

I always wonder if by the time *she’s* 16, she’ll be living off a meal a day, cigarettes, and diet Pepsi, all because my family is full of assholes.